Officials at the Stockertown cement quarry say sinkholes downstream drain water from the creek, leading to intermittent flow. If it weren’t for Hercules pumping its excess ground water into the creek, the Bushkill would run dry a lot more often, according to plant manager Richard Zimmel.

Water levels dropped for four hours on the morning of June 3. Zimmel said the pumps shut down following a weather-related power failure caused by arcing of 69,000-volt power lines between two of the plant’s substations.

During the power failure, the creek ran dry from the edge of Palmer Township through Stockertown and into Tatamy.

Joe Baylog, president of Forks of the Delaware Chapter of Trout Unlimited, believes the Bushkill Creek is almost “totally married” to the Hercules quarry and its pumps.

Hercules Cement Co. pumps, bottom left, pump ground water out of the 200-foot-deep Stockertown quarry, seen in the background.Express-Times Photo | BILL ADAMS

“As things stand now, it is obvious that water flow in the Bushkill Creek is now totally dependent on Hercules Cement Quarry’s capacity to pump water continuously without any interruptions,” he said in an email. “We feel that this is an absolutely unacceptable situation.”

Anna Maria Caldara, an environmental activist from Bangor, called the dry creek a “serious environmental issue.”

“A creek that has been de-watered because of a pump failure says to me that we need to rethink what we’re doing. This is not something that occurs in a vacuum.”

No easy solution

Zimmel said Hercules lined the creek upstream to prevent water from flowing to the quarry. The water comes into the quarry from the ground, is pumped into the creek as part of the mining process and exits the creek bed through an abundance of sinkholes, he said.

Hercules wants to line the creek downstream of the quarry to keep it from running dry, but faces opposition from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Hercules has closed sinkholes on its property and neighbors’ properties, but PennDOT won’t allow Hercules to fill sinkholes near Route 33, Zimmel said.

PennDOT spokesman Ron Young said lining the Bushkill Creek could harm the nearby highway bridges.

“While stream-lining through the state right-of-way may have slightly reduced the quarry’s pumping rates, the state experts felt it could also dramatically lower the water table around the bridge foundations and cause them to become unstable,” Young said. A span in that area started sinking and had to be replaced in 2004.

“Stream-lining also has the potential to move the problem downstream to the point where the channel lining would end,” Young said.

Hercules representatives, conservationists, experts in the fields of geology and hydrology and other stakeholders have agreed to form a task force to combat future incidents.

The problem goes back years. Nazareth resident Brian Wagner, secretary of Forks of the Delaware Chapter of Trout Unlimited, remembers walking the slippery stream bed with buckets and nets scooping up fish stranded in shrinking puddles in 2008. That year, electric pumps at Hercules were turned off for maintenance, and the auxiliary diesel pumps used might have provided less water to the creek.

The result was dead fish by the armload.

The stream also went dry in 1999 when diesel pumps replaced the electric pumps during maintenance work.

“Our concerns are it could occur again and if the sinkhole situation is getting worse. It’s hard to tell,” Wagner said. “We want to see the stream thrive, but we also want the quarry to thrive.”

She said if there is a second incident, Hercules’ permit could be pulled. If pumps fail in the future, the DEP can fine Hercules up to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the severity of the violation.

Connolly said the DEP is unaware of any fish kill or whether fish were killed as a result of the pumps failing, although a photo from The Brookwood Group's Facebook page shows about 20 dead fish in a dry creek bed.

Linda Iudicello, a Palmer Township resident and co-founder of The Brookwood Group, said she saw at least 60 dead fish there.

Eric Levis, a spokesman for the state Fish and Boat Commission, said his department found no evidence of a “significant fish kill” and it appeared Hercules was operating within the limits of its DEP permit.

“We’re still researching,” Connolly said. “We’re working with Hercules to try and find out what happened here.”

Zimmel said once the substations were restored and inspected for safety, power was restored to the pumps as a first priority.

“This was the first time in over four years that the company’s discharge to the Bushkill Creek was disrupted,” the plant manager said.

He said Hercules has invested more than $12 million in recent years upgrading its pumping system to reduce the potential for extended disruptions in water flow.

Nearly impossible to fix

Iudicello lives along the Bushkill Creek and is a member of the Bushkill Stream Conservancy. She and The Brookwood Group have been monitoring sinkholes along the Bushkill since 1999. She agrees there are numerous sinkholes along the stream from Route 33 down to Tatamy. She said it’s nearly impossible to fix them.

Lee Creyer, conservation officer for Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission waterways, agreed. Water flows out of the creek into the depths of the earth and “no one really knows where it goes,” he said.

“Without the continuous flow from the pumps, the water just goes down the holes,” Creyer said. “After they resumed pumping, it takes quite some time to fill the sinkholes first, then the flow into the Bushkill.”

Forks of the Delaware Chapter Trout Unlimited, as well as members of the Bushkill Conservancy and The Brookwood Group, met with members of the Hercules Cement quarry two weeks ago to try to come up with long-term solutions.

“Sitting down as a group and saying, ‘Let’s invest in this and what’s the best remedy?’ will help find viable solutions in case this happens again,” Iudicello said. “… We can see if we can come up with a fix for this.”

She said one solution considered in the past was looking at the quarry’s diesel auxiliary pumps as a potential back-up. But Bushkill Conservancy President-Elect Bob Egolf, also a Forks Township supervisor, said buying a back-up generator for the quarry would cost millions.